Conventional, externally pressurized, air bearing spindles are designed such that the spindle rotation is bidirectional, allowing a motor to rotate the spindle in either a clockwise direction or a counterclockwise direction. This bi-directionality allows for these conventional, externally pressurized, air bearing spindles to be used in a wide variety of applications, some of which utilize clockwise spindle rotation, some of which utilize counterclockwise spindle rotation, and some of which alternately utilize clockwise and counterclockwise spindle rotation. Some applications such as servo track writing on raw media for hard disk drives (“HDD”) are affected by spindle performance.